Yelp Reviews for B&D Appliance Repair Service

The 5-star reviews Yelp allows you to see. Shouldn't you get to see them all?

Why Does Yelp Filter Our Real Customer Reviews?

As of today, October 16th, 2013, we have a total of 15 customer reviews on our B&D Appliance Service Yelp listing. 2 of them are showing and 13 of them are hidden (filtered). All 15 reviews are Real Reviews from our Real Customers. A week ago, you could see 5 reviews on our Yelp page and 10 of them were (filtered). Why does Yelp filter our REAL "Customer Reviews"? They say it's to guard against fake reviews and if a review doesn't seem real, their system automatically filters it. They also say that sometimes a real review is accidentally filtered by mistake. SOMETIMES????Then all 13 of our filtered reviews have accidentally been filtered by mistake! I can understand a couple here and there but 13 out of 15? For the longest time, I didn't understand why our real reviews wouldn't stay up on our yelp listing. I couldn't find a phone number to contact Yelp or an e-mail address or anything. Why would such a big company make it so hard to contact them? Then one day, one of my customers told me what she had just learned about Yelp and that there was a big class action law suit against them. I began looking online for information about Yelp and couldn't believe what I was reading.If you do a Google Search for "Yelp Complaints", or "Yelp Lies", or "Yelp Extortion", you'll find a lot of unhappy small business owners going through the same thing or much worse. Many small business owners say that Yelp does this on purpose to companies who won't upgrade their free listing. I've read that once a yelp representative contacts you about advertising, you'll learn quickly that they don't like to hear "No thank you" or "It's not in our budget right now" or anything other than "Yes". They also said that the sales rep won't stop calling & pressuring you and if you continue to say "No thank you" or ignore their calls & e-mails, you'll start to see changes on your listing like more (filtered) positive reviews or even worse, a fabricated negative review. They say that the sales rep tells them by paying a $299.00 monthly advertising fee they can bring them more business and help get some of the filtered positive reviews back up and see about getting negative reviews off their listing. Actually, I was being nice calling it an advertising fee. Some of those small business owners called it "extortion money" and compared Yelp to the Mafia. The Mafia would force people to pay the monthly "Protection Insurance" or their business would suffer the consequences. Many of the companies said they asked Yelp to please take their listing completely off the site but Yelp refused.Since the average person using Yelp doesn't know all this is going on, they believe what they're reading and avoid businesses with these very bad ratings. If the potential customer only sees negative reviews, do you think they are going to call that business? From so many of the posts I've read, I've learned that people trying to get accurate information about businesses listed on Yelp are being mislead because many of the opinions of reviewers are being hidden (filtered). Some business owners who were barely making ends meet and couldn't afford the "Protection Insurance", (I mean "Advertising Money") said they were losing customers because of only negative reviews showing on their listing and some of those were fabricated. Not only were these families going through undeserved stress and financial hardship, many of them eventually lost their business & their dream. I believe when you're in business you should be honest & reputable. Your customers should be able to trust that you're doing the right thing. Even though Yelp was filtering most of our reviews, I was still promoting them on my website. You would think they would be happy to have an honest company with happy customers on their site. I support local small businesses (as long as their honest & good to their customers) and I've helped several people start their own business. It's not easy owning your own business. Small business owners have to work harder and face hardships all the time. The last thing an honest small business owner needs is a Huge Corporation pushing them around and trying to ruin their good reputation unless they pay up. I felt very lucky that no one from Yelp had called me yet to offer me a "great advertising deal" but my luck has run out. The things I've been reading about happening to the Yelp Listings of so many small business owners are now happening to our business listing on Yelp. What used to be 5 "Five Star Reviews" showing on our listing are now 2 and the sudden changes started shortly after the first call from Mike Ramsey, Account Executive at Yelp. Do you think it's just a coincidence?

How to see filtered (hidden) reviews on Yelp

Click on the screen shot to the left for larger image. How to view filtered reviews on any Yelp business listing.

Can we trust a "Review Site" that only let's us see what THEY want us to see? Aren't we entitled to decide for ourselves based on "ALL" reviews?

Update11/17/2013- I just noticed that Yelp made a change to how you see the reviews they hide from the public. Where it used to say (filtered reviews) it now says "reviews that are not currently recommended". If you click on that, you can see all our hidden reviews from REAL CUSTOMERS. They won't count those reviews for our Rating or our Rating would be much higher! Does that seem fair to you? Since Yelp hides the truth, you can't really trust Yelp!

Hidden Customer Reviews on Yelp for B&D Appliance Repair Service in Palmdale, CA

A Few Of Our Filtered Reviews on Yelp

I agree that fake reviews written with fake names just to make a business look good should be taken off and fake negative reviews as well but when a REAL Customer takes the time to sit down and write a REAL Review for a business, that review should be seen. Just because someone signs up with Yelp and only writes 1 or 2 reviews doesn't mean it's a fake review but so many of those are filtered. Here are some REAL Reviews our customers have taken the time to write for us on Yelp but nobody sees when they go to our Yelp page.Just click on our Customer's Name below to see the review they wrote for us. We appreciate each and every customer and we thank you for your reviews. We are sorry that Yelp didn't think your review was real. We know it was and we appreciate the time you took to write it.

To see more of our filtered reviews, just click the button to your right.

The number of Filtered Reviews may have changed since 10/16/13

Update on our Yelp Reviews

It seems everything I'm reading about Yelp Complaints on the internet is true. On October 22nd, 2013 we received an e-mail and a 2nd voice mail from someone who says he's Mike Ramsey, Senior Account Executive from Yelp. Below is the e-mail and the 2nd voice-mail.

B & D Appliance Service is listed on Yelp, which is a website that connects people with great local businesses. More than 108 million unique visitors* come to Yelp each month. In the last thirty days, your Yelp profile was viewed 49 times. I'd like to speak with you over the phone to show you how to drive more business through your doors from Yelp. The call will last about 20 minutes, so please let me know your availability this week.

Audio message. Make sure your speakers are on and click the arrow on the Audio Player below....

ScreenShot of B&D Appliance Service Yelp Listing on October 23, 2013

Take a look at our B&D Appliance Service Yelp Page October 23, 2013 which is just 1 day after Mike Ramsey from Yelp left us his 2nd voice mail message and sent us an E-mail. You will also see how our Yelp Page went from 4 reviews showing to 1 review showing & 16 reviews filtered by October 26, 2013. Do you think it has anything to do with not returning Mike's call to talk about advertising????Go to Yelp Reviews Page 2

This Real Review which was written by James M. in Palmdale, CA, a Real Customer, has been visible on our Yelp listing since 1/08/2011. On 10/26/2013 it was "Filtered". That is 4 days after Mike Ramsey left his 2nd voice mail & first e-mail. Coincidence? I checked and James has wrote 13 reviews on Yelp so there is NO logical reason to filter the review he wrote for us! Other reviews he wrote are not filtered! "This is just WRONG Mike Ramsey! I'm an Honest man running an Honest business. It's very obvious what you're doing here."(Here is the review James wrote for us)Very Happy With B&D Appliance Service "I found B&D in the AT&T Yellow Pages. Jeff (the son) came out today to fix my washer. He was professional, courteous, explained what was wrong and fixed it promptly. The price was exactly what was quoted to me and I would recommend then to anybody in the AV area. I am a very satisifed customer."By James M.1/08/2011posted on Yelp(in the "Filtered Jail" now)This Review from James has been on our Yelp listing for over 2 years & 9 months but NOW they decide to "Filter" it?

Message for Mike Ramsey at Yelp

Mike, the reason I didn't call you back is I already knew I wasn't going to upgrade the free listing Yelp offers and I didn't want to waste your time so I thought it might be better to respond to you this way. In fact, everyone should read it.......Just click the "Message For Mike" button below-Bob Meadows/B&D Appliance Service.

The phone calls came almost daily. It started to get creepy."Hi, this is Mike from Yelp," the voice would say. "You've had three hundred visitors to your site this month. You've had a really good response. But you have a few bad ones at the top. I could do something about those."Read More